This publication presents an in-depth look at Annie E. Casey Foundation's investment in the Washington, DC voucher
effort and summarizes results and lessons learned so far. It also includes stories about the
Foundation’s contribution to vouchers in Florida and Milwaukee.

This publication provides an overview of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s investments in chartering along
with selected results and lessons learned. It also presents stories about two successful charter
efforts and Annie E. Casey Foundation's contribution to them.

Every parent recognizes the inextricable connections between where we live and the quality of our children's education. Although public policies have historically contributed to disparities in both neighborhood affordability and school quality, federal programs focused on affordable housing rarely take public schools into account and school officials typically assume that they have no influence over housing patterns. This paper focuses on four principles regarding the vitality and performance of schools and communities, discussing opportunities for constructive policy interventions, summarizing what we know about their likely effectiveness, and recommending next steps for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education.

This important research explores the effects of district policy interventions on the distribution of teacher qualifications and student achievement. Authors use a 5-year span of individual teacher- and student-level longitudinal data from New York City (NYC) from 2000 through 2005 to estimate the differences in the effectiveness of teachers entering NYC schools through different pathways to teaching. The study finds that the gap between the qualifications of NYC teachers in high-poverty and low-poverty NYC schools has narrowed substantially since 2000, mostly ensuing from the city's concentrated effort to match exceptionally capable teachers with very needy students and the virtual substitution of newly hired uncertified teachers in high-poverty schools with new hires from alternative certification routes: NYC Teaching Fellows and Teach for America.

Using individual teacher and student-level longitudinal data from North Carolina, this research brief presents selected findings from work examining the stability of value-added model estimates of teacher effectiveness, focusing on their implication for teacher tenure policies and making high stakes personnel decisions. Findings show year-to-year correlations in teacher effects are modest, but pre-tenure estimates of teacher job performance do predict estimated post-tenure performance in both math and reading, and would therefore seem to be a reasonable metric to use as a factor in making substantive teacher selection decisions.

A college education strongly affects whether or not children from poor or low-income families move up the economic ladder when they become adults. But they are less likely to enroll in either two- or four-year colleges, and less likely to complete a degree when they do, relative to those from middle- and upper-income families — even after accounting for differences in academic preparation. We review current federal efforts to help low-income students attend college, and recommend new policies that would improve their academic preparation, provide more effective guidance on selecting and paying for college, and improve retention and graduation rates.

Education Secretary Duncan is outlining priorities for the "Race to the Top" Fund. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, states must offer assurances that they are making progress in adopting rigorous standards; recruiting and retaining effective teachers where they are needed most; turning around low-performing schools; and building data systems to track student achievement and teacher effectiveness.

This three-year longitudinal study found an increase in academic achievement and positive youth development for participants in the program over nonparticipants. On February 20, 2009 the American Youth Policy Forum will explore what makes the Childrens Aid approach distinctive.

The Brookings Institution is calling on the federal government to "change the game" in public education by creating a federal Office of Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Department of Education. The authors cite the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their more affluent peers, along with findings that US 15-year-olds perform worse than students in 23 countries in math and behind 11 countries in reading.

You may know Dr. Susan B. Neuman as the apostate former Bush administration official who publicly opposes No Child Left Behind in its current form and has made headlines by arguing that schools alone cannot close achievement gaps. But Neuman has received less attention for her affirmative vision of what we can do to improve poor students' odds dramatically—she shares her vision with Claus von Zastrow in this Public School Insights interview (with audio).